


The Mourning

by thequeenmeera



Series: If Not For You [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Mourning, continuation of earlier piece, i was going to just let this lie but it wouldn't leave me alone, if you're happy and you know it don't read this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 07:55:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18311414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequeenmeera/pseuds/thequeenmeera
Summary: After Torrhen's death Meera struggles to accept and recover from the loss leading Bran and Arya to make a drastic decision





	The Mourning

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a slightly longer explanation of what happened between Torrhen's death and Lyra's birth and is still pretty much a summary/description. It just wouldn't leave me alone so I wrote it down and am posting it. It starts out in Bran's perspective and segues into Arya's and ends up being mostly about Arya and I like that so I'm not going to expend the energy to change it. I also ran out of juice around 3/4 of the way through which is why it just kind of goes flat but I wanted it done. Anyway, ...enjoy?

Bran woke suddenly, sweating and shivering. The bedchamber was dark and cold and his dreams that night had been less than desirable. He felt for Meera’s hand, seeking the comfort of her touch only to find the covers rumpled, his wife gone. He sighed. She must have left to hold Torrhen and perhaps to nurse him. It was time to wean the boy, Meera knew that but he knew she still nursed him every few days. “This is what weaning means Bran,” she’d told him, “He does not need to change to solid food all of a sudden.” Bran had not argued with her for long. He was a man and did not know much about such things and the Maester had agreed a slow transition would not hurt.

Bran shifted and had just begun to slip back into the realm of sleep when he heard a bell tolling somewhere in the Winter’s Town. A bell? A death knell he realized sleepily. A death knell because of the fever that was ravaging the North. The fever he’d had and was still recovering from. That was why he was sweating so much. It took longer for him to remember the horrible truth that clenched in his gut. He did not wish to remember but he must. His son was dead. Taken by the fever a fortnight before. But then where was Meera?

Bran gasped and struggled to pull himself up against the pillows, calling for Meera. The ruckus alerted the guard outside who stumbled into the bedchamber looking like he’d just woken as well. “Your – your grace?” the guard stumbled.

“Where is the queen, Roger? I need you to find her and bring her here.”

The man searched for her, starting with the privy which was empty and then wandering about the halls. Meera was in the nursery, such an obvious place. The guard called Roger found his queen wandering about the room in her shift, searching for her son. She was looking under the blankets, behind the furniture, calling for Torrhen. “Torrhen” she said, her voice hoarse and choked as she tugged blankets from the wardrobe, “my baby.”

The guard Roger tried to speak with her but she did not appear to hear. It was when he’d picked her up and begun to carry her back to her bed that she came to. Meera sobbed into the man’s shoulder as he carried her and laid her gently in the bed.

After that it was only a matter of days before everyone in Winterfell knew – the queen was going mad. She wept over meals and during rainstorms. Guards often had to carry her back to her chambers from the nursery, the crypts where her baby and his stillborn sister had been laid, or the godswood where she was thrice caught with a knife to her arm. She claimed she was feeding the tree, that the blood would bring her babe back.

The evening of Meera’s third attempt Bran called his sister to his solar to discuss what would be done. “I believe,” Bran reasoned to Arya, “that time away from Winterfell may help. This place is a breeding ground for ghosts. Perhaps time with her own family, with her own people, will ease the pain.”

There was not much room for argument and the Maester had no better solutions for Meera’s malady so within two days she was helped onto her horse and sent south, back to her father’s house. The presence of the Princess Arya in the party mostly dispelled the rumors that the king was putting his wife aside though a few bold lords arranged to visit Winterfell with their maiden daughters in tow anyway. A mad wife would be easily set aside they reasoned and even if that did not work a bastard child had a better chance of inheriting than a dead one.

On the road Arya got little sleep as her good-sister woke from her nightmares often. She’d wake screaming or sleepwalking about the surrounding hills and needed to be caught and calmed. On the fifth night in the long, dark hours preceding the dawn Arya was woken not by the loud shrieks or desperate calling for Torrhen or Bran she was already used to hearing but rather by Meera quietly murmuring strange names into the night. “Jya” Meera hiccoughed; in the darkness Arya could see Meera was sitting up but her voice sounded wrung out, cried out.

“Meera,” she called quietly and reached for her good-sister’s small, cold hand. “Who is Jya, Meera?”

Meera turned her head and swallowed another hiccough, “The first baby; the stillborn. I wanted to call her after my mother. I didn’t have names for the miscarriages.”

“Oh” Arya bit her lip, trying to think of what to say. “Are you going to try wandering the hills again?”

“No, I ought to go back to sleep.” Meera did lay back down and as far as Arya could tell she did sleep.

Arya herself had difficulty sleeping. She hadn’t known that Bran and Meera, or perhaps only Meera, had already chosen a name for their stillborn babe, though it made sense. The first two pregnancies had ended so early but Meera had been some six months on when she’d fallen down those stairs.

The journey to Greywater was long, much longer than Arya had expected it to be. They rode through woods and over thousands of grassy knolls, up and over and around larger hills with steep sides. One of their men was sure to point out the barrows in the barrowlands. Meera grew more peaceful as they neared her father’s home and Arya hoped it would last. _Perhaps all she needed was some quiet?_ Arya thought, considering her good-sister one morning. Meera had slept the night through and hadn’t shed a tear in over a day that Arya knew of. But if leaving Winterfell had cured Meera of the madness that had been plaguing her in her grief, would she want to return?

The trees of the Neck were tall and the swamps treacherous and the group had to leave their horses at the nearest holdfast to be returned to Winterfell. Arya was nearly caught by a lizard-lion on the second day they spent picking through the tall grasses and wading through shallow streams with Meera leading the way since not a one of their group had wandered past the causeway before. The creature laid so still in the water Arya had thought it a log and even bumped into its tail. Meera had grabbed Arya and pulled her back just as the lizard-lion thrashed, whipping its tail in the water just where Arya had been and turning about to lunge at their party. One of the guards had had the wherewithal to have a spear on hand and they’d eaten salted lizard-lion for a week. Meera kept the hide rolled up in her pack with the intention of having boots made out of it for Arya.

Greywater was not what Arya had been expecting, Meera had hardly said a word about her home in all the years they’d known each other. The castle was more a collection of individual towers all floating about on their individual bogs and connected by bridges. The many pieces of the castle would stay in generally the same formation, Meera explained to them, but they moved often and when the bogs moved they couldn’t be stopped so all the bridges could be easily disconnected, lengthened or shortened, and boats were always on hand. “You’ll get used to the drifting feeling in a day or two” Meera added, nearly as an afterthought.

Meera seemed to stay better once they’d reached Greywater. Meera was often to be found with her father or in the godswood. A strange godswood it was but there was a weirdwood at the center of the bog. Arya wasn’t sure if her good-sister really was getting better but since Meera had yet to be caught wandering about the halls crying for her son it was an improvement.

It could not last, of course. Meera did not suffer as much as she had those first weeks in Winterfell but once the novelty of being back in her father’s house and among her own people had worn off the darkness began to return. She woke often at night and was short-tempered with serving men when she was naturally of a cheerful disposition.

Arya did her best to occupy her good-sister. She convinced Meera to teach her how to sail the little skin-boats and wooden canoes the crannogmen used. They spent much of their time hunting, fishing, and foraging which by nature involved a great deal of waiting, watching, and being out of doors. Meera always seemed better when not entrapped by walls.

Meera taught Arya how to spot lizard-lions in the water or the grass and how one could – if mad enough – jump on the creature’s back and hold it down either to assist a fellow hunter in killing the beast or for entertainment.

She also taught Arya to catch turtles. There were hundreds of different kinds in the Neck ranging from miniscule spotted varieties to the enormous, aggressive turtles that lay in wait just beneath the water’s surface for prey with their sharp-beaked jaws open much like the lizard-lions. Turtle soup, Arya soon discovered, was a fine meal.

Over her months in the Neck the mysteries of the Crannogmen were unraveled for Arya one by one. She learned to walk silently and which spots would hold her weight and which wouldn’t. She was taught how to create the small, poison-tipped darts and how to blow them at an enemy with accuracy. Arya was fascinated by the people’s methods of building villages either on raised platforms or on bogs built and maintained over generations.

The people of the Neck were harder to befriend being withdrawn and maintaining strict rules of conduct, especially regarding outsiders. Arya was persistent, however, and managed to get on well enough.

It was just when Arya had quite settled herself that Meera made up her mind to return to Winterfell. “I’m not finished grieving for Torrhen,” she told Arya, “but I don’t think I ever will be done. I still grieve for Jojen and my mother. But I miss Bran. We’ve never been apart for so long and I’ve some words for him.”

“Well if you’re sure I cannot object,” was all Arya could think to say in response.

It was not long before Arya found herself back in the familiar world of Winterfell with her brothers and her wolf with Bran and Meera expecting another babe. Winterfell was right, it was where she belonged but she knew that there was a space in her heart that could only be filled with quiet, warm evenings floating amongst the reeds in a skin boat and surrounded by the sounds of croaking frogs and buzzing insects, a large, ridged log-like creature grazing past on its hunt.


End file.
